New Forest District Council voted last night to approve the National Scheme of Delegation (NSD) changes into their constitution.

This means that, any application determined after 31^st October, regardless of the date on which it was submitted, must follow the new rules, and be determined subject to the Legislature.

The consequence of this is that any prior call ins, or objections from town or parish councils under the previous constitution are not relevant factors for consideration.

It is only the ‘Gateway Test’ that is relevant and this shall only itself be applied to applications falling within Schedule 2 of the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026.

All planning committees after this date therefore should only be considering ‘Schedule 2’ applications, which have been formally agreed to need to be determined by the committee, as decided by the Head of Planning (the likely nominated party) and the Chairman of the Committee.

Schedule 2 applications themselves only qualify for consideration for referral to the committee where they, at minimum meet one of the statutory criteria:

A: Where the application raises a significant planning matter having regard to the development plan and any other material considerations;

• • The government have provided further clarification on this, which confirms that the following will be unlikely to qualify:-
    • Where the application for development broadly complies with a detailed site allocation and other relevant policies set out in a local or neighbourhood plan and national decision making policies set out in the National Planning Policy Framework. Significant planning matters may arise if new material considerations are raised by the application.
    • Where a specific planning matter (e.g. highways or flood risk) was initially raised by a statutory consultee as a concern, but the development proposal has been modified to make it acceptable in the view of the statutory consultee (unless the nominated officer has compelling reasons to consider otherwise).

B: Where the application raises an economic, social or environmental issue of significance to the local area;

• • • This is more open ended, but the issue itself has to be of actual significance. Applications are only to be exceptionally referred to committee, so this will need to be treated as a high threshold.

A development does not therefore need to comply fully with the development plan or national policy to be capable of being determined under delegated powers.

The requirement is only ‘broad compliance’. A conflict with the spatial strategy, because the local plan is out of date, but adherence with all other policies of the local plan and full adherence with National Policy will not therefore reasonably qualify.

Given the number of applications being made in view of the extremely poor housing land supply position, a symptom of the out of date local plan and strategy for meeting needs, the Council will need to consider carefully whether, if complying otherwise with all other policies of the development plan, there is reasonable justification to refer such applications for the Committee’s determination as, the test of ‘exceptional referral’ will be being stretched if this approach is applied consistently in all cases.

We will be watching closely to see how the Council seeks to implement the Gateway Test in practice.

Other local authorities are also set to consider the NSD:

• BCP Council are considering a change to their constitution for NSD tonight (13^th October)
• Test Valley Borough Council are considering it on Wednesday 14^th October.
• Dorset Council are considering it on 22^nd October.